RUSH: Let’s start in Pensacola, Florida. Bob, I’m glad you waited. It’s great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks a lot.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I have this question in light of this debate coming up between Biden and Ryan. Biden, as I recall, was hired for his foreign policy expertise and his gravitas. I’d like Ryan to ask him directly or the moderator to ask him directly — of course there’s probably not much chance of that — if he was consulted at all, either before or during or after this Benghazi mess, and if his advice was taken.

RUSH: This is gonna be an interesting debate, because in addition to Biden being promoted as this great foreign policy expert, guess what else he was? He was the sheriff of the stimulus. Remember that? “Yeah, you can’t get anything past old Joe! Sheriff Joe is gonna make sure that there isn’t any chicanery in that stimulus!” So he could be asked, “Vice President Biden, were you involved in over a million dollars going to Big Bird from the shovel-ready stimulus?”

I don’t think that’s how Ryan’s gonna play it.

I don’t have any inside information, but my guess is that they’re kind of quaking in their boots over at the White House about this because Ryan is not afraid of these people. He stood up to Obama in a health care meeting that was televised. He had no problem telling Obama to his face that essentially he was making it up; that there were much better ideas. There were much better ways to do this.

And you could see the irritation and the anger in Obama’s face. Nobody talks to him that way, especially some underling congressman from Wisconsin. Ryan knows everything Biden knows and then some. Ryan is as knowledgeable. He has got the facts. He’s confident. I think this is gonna be fascinating to watch Thursday night. This is not Biden versus some neophyte.

No, I’m not talking about anybody else. I’m talking to people in many parts of the country who hadn’t heard of Ryan before he was nominated. I’m saying he’s an expert. He’s an independent thinker. He can and does think on his feet. He’s articulate. He’s not gonna be afraid of Biden at all. Biden’s reputation, Biden’s image, Biden’s experience, Biden’s time in Washington? None of that’s gonna intimidate Ryan.

In fact, I bet it’s the other way around given what happened with Romney and Obama. And don’t forget: In addition to sheriff of the stimulus, Biden was also assigned by Obama to protect the middle class. I mean, you got failure upon failure upon failure personified in Joe Biden. You’ve got gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. You know, Biden… If I’m not mistaken about this.

Biden said once upon a time that the Taliban are not our enemies. Remember Joe Biden wanted to partition Iraq? Joe Biden’s solution to the Iraq war was to partition it. He thought you had the Kurds, you had the Sunnis, you had the Shi’ites, and Joe Biden said (impression), “To hell with this, man! Come on, man. Everybody knows what we need to do! You need to divide that country into three and get the hell out of there.” He was against the bin Laden hit.

I mean, Ryan’s not afraid of the guy, and he’s not intimidated by the guy. It’s gonna be fascinating to watch the moderator here, the moderator who hosted Barack Obama at her wedding back in 1991. Martha Raddatz used to be married to the FCC grand pooh-bah, a guy named Julius Genachowski. Raddatz, Genachowski, and Obama all went to Harvard. (Hell, who doesn’t in our government anymore, come out of Harvard or Yale?)

At any rate, her job is gonna be to make sure that Ryan doesn’t run roughshod, that Ryan doesn’t get away with speaking longer than the rules permit, all this kind of stuff. I’ll tell you, the left and the others in the media and the regime are gonna be really, really counting on Martha Raddatz. The moderator here is gonna be viewed as just as important if not more so than Biden. Gotta make sure the balance remains in favor of Biden.

Here is December 21st, 2008, an AP story: “As vice president, Joe Biden will oversee an Obama administration effort to find ways of building up the ranks of the middle class, that ambiguously defined segment of society most Americans identify with. … The goal is to recommend proposals to ensure the middle class is ‘no longer being left behind,’ Biden said. The proposals could include executive orders and legislative plans.”

So this is December.

This is before Obama’s been immaculated, and Biden was gonna be the protector and the guarantor of the middle class. It was just last week that Biden’s running around (impression), “Come on, man! I mean, for crying out loud, for cripes sake, don’t you know the middle class has been buried the last four years? Get with it, man! Don’t you know that? Come on, man! The middle class has been buried for four years! They’ve just been buried. What are we talking about here?”

This is the guy who was assigned, in December 2008, with making sure that they never got buried. I don’t want to predict this, folks. I don’t want to contribute to overconfidence in any way. But you’re probably not going to want to miss this. (Biden impression) “Yeah, come on, man! For crying out loud, don’t you see it, man? The middle class has been buried for four years,” like these guys haven’t been in office. They’re the candidates. They’re the challengers. The press has been covering Obama like he’s the challenger and covering Romney like he is the incumbent.